Formula:

Where Target = Majority

Chancy Referendum  =   Ferocity of Fear + Gnashionalism                                                                           Disinformation + Deceit                               

Observations:

Where Strategy = 0

[Taking back our] borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Read and leave comments (7)

A penchant for pain and a lack of remorse

marked you out as a 'mental case'.

Dog chains for fights, cock of the town;

you shared a room with your mother

until your brother died.

In every cup of Stephen's tea

spat bubbles of your hate.

Lock-knives launched into the fields,

between/beside our legs;

endless games of chicken.

Your legendary enmity emptied e...

Read and leave comments (5)

This is a road with no name.

A road that leads to

war / peace / love / hate / escape / return / home.*

Repositioned, reframed, retold;

a road without a name can lead to

anywhere / everywhere.*

Scenes unfold in simultaneous motion

as the foot, the wheel, the eye, the mind*

ride this road

in parallel / sequence.*

Represented, recorded, reordered;

...

Read and leave comments (4)

It’s just locker room.

It’s just talk.

It’s just locker room talk.

Locker room mocking.

It’s just locker room banter.

Locker room assault.

It’s just locker room misogyny.

Locker room rape.

It’s just locker room rape.

It’s just rape.

It’s just misogyny.

Nobody has more respect for women than I do.

Nobody.

Read and leave comments (4)

The kitchen table’s nice and neat.

No tea stains, ash or traces.

No paper strewn.

The bed is huge.

My legs have room to stretch.

The dishes few, the bathroom clean,

no hair or splash or mess.

No rhapsody or midnight kiss.

The nights are wiped of snore and twitch

but I can’t sleep

and all I feel is mirrored in the order:

spick-and-span

and cleft an...

Read and leave comments (5)

Brring brring… brring brring…

 “This call is being recorded for training purposes”

and Christ you hate that fucking thing.

You speak for 7, 8, 9, 10, however many hours,

losing faith in all humanity with every mardy customer.

Explain to re-explain to re-re-re-explain again,

no deviation from the script,

and you can only tell me this, no more, no less,

this call’s ...

Read and leave comments (6)

30 plus years buying sanitary ware

and now I over-spend on medication;                       

a two-synth twin script                                              

reproducing oomph

that my over-worked ovaries

depleted.

30 plus years paying too much tax

on tampax, panty pads,          

and now I get to shell out                                                     ...

Read and leave comments (0)

We went out of season, so it was cheap.

I wanted to explore the caves

where, I’d heard, people actually lived.

Imagine, living in caves.

I wanted to hire a car, drive the length of the island,

touch each tip of it with my Northern English fingers

and taste Balearic boundaries;

take home a token pebble               

to remember ephemeral freedoms.

I wanted...

Read and leave comments (7)

With reference to your letter dated blah blah blah

about insufferable nuisance in your local public park.

The one about dogs.

Big dogs, little dogs, fluffy dogs, scruffy dogs,

running dogs, spitty dogs, dogs off leads (dogs on leads).

I believe you when you say you feel threatened.

Plus, no one likes to step into a poo.

And with reference to your letter dated blah bl...

Read and leave comments (5)

Crisp within her vase,

dead red roses on display;

fragile in the light.

Lack of sickly scent.

Seeing beauty in decay;

brittleness deflects.

Look but do not touch,

your fingers are forbidden;

petals turn to dust.

Floral deviance

delighting in senescence;

ring of rosy death.

Read and leave comments (9)

A sea of faces

staring blankly in the dark;

will a haiku work?

I open my mouth,

so do the folk at the back;

my words drown in theirs.

I cannot punch them.

What would Ivor Cutler do?

I wither with verse,

amplify volume,

begin to shriek down the mic;

they match my ascent.

Spotlit abasement.

What would Ale...

Read and leave comments (9)

It was Dante’s cat that caused it;

ignored by Alighieri, busy with an epic,

he trod on vellum, got chucked off,

then grinning like a witless fool,

played a game with candle flames,

balloons, and unattended tails.

Kaboom!

The smell of burning fur

and fear shat across the room!

The door to Hell now battered down

by four demented paws of doom.

Meoww! Wh...

Read and leave comments (8)

Whatever happened to those noble mountain men,

darlings of the media,

Ronnie’s holy warriors,

freedom fighters, locked

and benevolently loaded?

And do monumental errors

have a domino effect

in a land where the one eyed man is king?

And who are these dirty radicals

decapitating Capitol,

where did they get Kalashnikovs

and did they pay in dollars?

Read and leave comments (2)

I’d go for something by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass

to start with, as folk filtered in;

set some off sniggering.

Then Jammy Smears, in full.

Ivor would have loved that,

gleefully noting the increasing unease

that imbued the occasion;

sobriety lost to a rousing ensemble version

of Squeeze Bees.

For those wishing to observe traditional reverence,

Ne M...

Read and leave comments (8)

(This is a re-post of a series of five interconnecting poems, previously blogged as separate poems. The death of my mother last year was preceded by hearing the tone poem Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius, on the radio, and it so completely described how I was feeling that it took me over, and informs the whole series.

As a big nod to Sibelius, I decided to use a loosely-based symphonic structure, so...

Read and leave comments (8)